Help:Sandboxes

Sandbox Pages Are For Practice
A page with the word Sandbox in its title is an agreed-upon place to practice editing in wikis, including Proteopedia. The contents of Sandbox pages are temporary. Anyone is invited to change the contents of a Sandbox page, in order to learn how to create content (text and molecular scenes with green links) in Proteopedia.

There are over 50 sandboxes already available in Proteopedia (see some linked in the box at the upper right). Some Sandbox page numbers between 1 and 50 may not exist yet -- you are welcome to create them (see How To Create A New Page).

Reserved Blocks of Sandboxes for Students
Teachers may reserve a block of consecutively numbered sandbox pages in advance, for use by students in their classes, as described in Teaching Strategies Using Proteopedia. See, for example Sandbox Reserved 1 or Sandbox Reserved 100.

Sandbox pages in a reserved block are reserved for you and your students until a date specified in the original reservation. After the agreed-upon expiration date, they will be recycled for use by other classes. However, should a student author an article worthy of becoming permanent, it can be moved to a permanent page prior to the expiration date -- see Student Projects.

There is an automated mechanism for this. To reserve a block of sandboxes, please contact.

Protected Sandbox Pages
After you apply for an account, and login (see request account at the upper right of every page), you can create Sandbox pages in your userspace. These are automatically protected from editing by anyone else. They are a great place to practice, and they are also the best place to develop a new page or article.

Here is a good way to set up a protected Sandbox.  *User:Your Name/Sandbox 1 
 * Login.
 * Click your name in the top line of the browser window. This should take you to your personal User page. The title at the top should be User:Your Name.
 * Click the tab near the top edit this page.
 * Suppose that your name (and your account login name) is Your Name. In the wikitext box, add the following:
 * Don't type "Your Name"! Type your own real login name!
 * Make sure there are no spaces before the above line. It should begin at the left edge of the wikitext box.
 * Click the Save button near the bottom of the page.

Now you should see this in your page:  User:Your Name/Sandbox 1 (The underline will not appear until you touch the red link with your mouse.) The link is red because your Sandbox 1 page does not yet exist.


 * Click the red link.
 * You should now be at a page titled Editing User:Your Name/Sandbox 1.

Now you have a protected Sandbox, and you are ready to type content into it, and use the Scene Authoring Tools.

After you save your new Sandbox 1 page, if you go to your personal User page, and click your browser's Reload/Refresh button (or click it on the View menu), the link to your new page should turn blue :  User:Your Name/Sandbox 1 The change in color of the link from red to blue is a convention in wikis that means the page now exists (has been saved).

Publishing Your Completed Article
Let's suppose that you have created an article in a Sandbox page, and now you want to "publish" it, that is, put it in the main Proteopedia database where anyone can edit it, and give it a suitable title. (A protected Sandbox page can be seen by anyone, but only you can edit it. It is not a good permanent home for a completed new page.)

Do not use the move tab at the top of your Sandbox. This will create a permanent redirect from your Sandbox to the new title, which is not appropriate


 * 1) Create a new page with an appropriate permanent title, following the procedure at How To Create A New Page.
 * 2) In a separate tab or window in your browser, view your completed Sandbox page.
 * 3) Edit your Sandbox page.
 * 4) Select the entire contents of the wikitext box and copy it.
 * 5) Edit your new, appropriately titled page.
 * 6) Paste the wikitext into the new, appropriately titled page.
 * 7) Save the new page.
 * 8) After you confirm that the new, appropriately titled page is correctly displaying the complete content, you may delete the wikitext in your Sandbox page if you wish.